At the end of seven rounds, the very evenly matched Cadet tournament ended with four players tied for 1st with 4.5 points. The Co-Champions are Michael Bodek, Christopher Gu, Christoher Wu, and Aleksandr Ostrovskiy. While all four are collectively the 2012 Cadet Co-Champions, the scholarship to the University of Maryland Baltimore County (UMBC) could not be shared, so a two-round knockout tournament determined the scholarship winner.

The base time control for the playoff games was G/15 +5". Similar to the Extreme Chess Championship, players submitted written bids for how low they would be willing to set their starting time to have white. Michael Bodek bid 9:55 and thus had white with a 5-minute time handicap against Christopher Wu.

Christopher Gu bid 11:59 beating out Alex Ostrovskiy's 12:00 bid and also received white. In the end, the bids were worth it as white won both games.

In the final playoff game, Christopher Gu out-bid Michael to get white.

In this case, though, the first move was not enough of an advantage, and Michael won the game and the scholarship to UMBC.